Seven days in medicine: 12-18 Feb 2020

Patient safety

Government orders urgent maternity review at East Kent Hospitals

NHS England and NHS Improvement will commission an urgent independent review of maternity services at East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, where several babies were found to have died preventable deaths. An independent support team has already been sent to the trust, which has been under the spotlight since care failings emerged during an inquest into the death of baby Harry Richford. He died in November 2017, a week after his birth at Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital in Margate. The coroner concluded that Harry’s death had been “wholly avoidable.” (Full story doi:10.1136/bmj.m610)

The Care Quality Commission used its urgent enforcement powers to protect patients after rating two emergency departments in Worcestershire “inadequate” in an unannounced inspection. Inspectors who visited emergency departments at Alexandra Hospital in Redditch and Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester found patients waiting too long for assessment and treatment, too often treated on corridors, and referred too slowly to specialists. The trust put conditions on the registration of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the two hospitals, obliging it to make urgent improvements. (Full story doi:10.1136/bmj.m615)

Learning disabilities and autism

Hancock is threatened with legal action over treatment

The Equality and Human Rights Commission launched a legal challenge against …